Normally, when homeowners and small businesses choose to go solar, they have to contact installers, go to solar fairs, or perhaps they’ll see a neighbor installing an array and get information from the installer then. But a new store, Solar & More, in Pompton Plains, N.J., is aiming to change that.

The store is basically a solar showroom, said company president Tom Ferraro.

“We had a soft opening about a month ago, and now we’re ready to have a grand opening,” Ferraro said.

Thus far, the store has been a success.

“We have cut back on our marketing plan. I know the importance of advertising and market. The buy-in has been in excess of what we anticipated,” he said. “We’re averaging maybe about seven or eight people a day. Each consultative meeting with a customer could last between 45 minutes to an hour. We’re real careful to make sure we have people available to talk with the customers.”

People can go into the store, check out equipment for their location and learn about options.

“We do everything; it’s kind of a unique model. It’s really a sales [mechanism],” Ferraro said. “The premise of the model is to educate the consumer on the benefits of solar.”

The store works with a team of qualified installers and helps customers apply for all of the appropriate incentives offered by the state.

At the store, customers can learn about the payback and how to pre-qualify for a system, what the cost would be and what the cash flow is, according to Ferraro.

“It’s a pretty interactive site, It’s built more as a showroom and learning center,” he said. “We spent some time early on to create an atmosphere that’s not really a high-pressure sale.”

To help reduce the pressure on customers, the store’s employees are salaried, according to Ferraro. “It’s a collegial atmosphere,” he said. It also means that salespeople aren’t pressured to sell a system, no matter what. “Some customers are interested in a system, and we have to tell them it’s not right for them.”

The company looked at working with solar leasing companies like SunRun and Sungevity, but decided not to. Still, they’re able to offer financing options for homeowners, according to Ferraro.

“We also have a same-as-cash program, under which people can get all the incentives together over a period of up to 18 months,” he said.

Under the same-as-cash program, customers can choose to put off payment for six, 12 or 18 months, according to Ferraro.

“If your system was $30,000, at the end of 18 months you could be down around $18,000,” he said. The extra period of time allows purchasers the time to get all the incentives before starting to pay for the array.

“This was the first store. Our business model was built to franchise these as we go forward. We have plans to build two more,” Ferraro said. They will build one more this year, and another next year. “After that, we can look into building more in different parts of the country.”